BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Former Bradford County Commissioner Eddie Lewis pleaded to theft charges associated with claims he stole harvested trees from a customer and sold the timber to a Lawtey-based sawmill.
In a Gainesville courtroom, Judge James M. Colaw withheld adjudication from the 70-year-old and sentenced him to three years’ probation.
The defendant’s restitution order was not available. However, the judge’s probation order indicated Lewis would be required to pay restitution, and a complaint filed against Lewis said he received $41,020 for the stolen logs.
The sworn complaint filed by the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office said a company owned by the former commissioner’s son, Josh Lewis, was hired as a subcontractor to harvest 238 acres of timber in northeast Alachua County. The Josh Lewis Timber Company Inc. was to take some of the wood to the West Fraser sawmill in Lake Butler and some to the company’s Maxville-Clay Hill operation. Wood products company West Fraser purchased the 238 acres in November 2023.
An Alachua Sheriff’s investigator wrote that someone telephoned a West Fraser manager and reported that he had seen five trailers of logs staged at Eddie Lewis’s Bradford County home.
The landholder then started an investigation. As part of the inquiry, a company investigator installed surveillance cameras throughout the 238-acre tract, recording every load of timber leaving the property.
Investigators also followed several trucks leaving the Alachua County tract and discovered that Lewis transported some timber to a Lawtey sawmill not approved by West Fraser.
According to the scale records, Lewis told sawmill employees that the timber came from a woman’s property.
“A recorded phone conversation with (the woman) revealed that the defendant and co-defendant are family members,” wrote the sheriff’s investigator, “(and they were) not harvesting any timber for her.”
Prosecutors also charged Josh Lewis with grand theft, fraud, and dealing in stolen property. The sheriff’s investigator said the commissioner’s son knew or should have known about his father’s activities.
Josh Lewis pleaded to the same charges as his father and received an identical sentence.
Both defendants are eligible for early termination of their probation sentences.
